Toby Norris, “Between the Lines: the Juste Milieu in Interwar France,” in Adamson & Norris (eds.), Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the Arrière-garde

“The Querelle du Réalisme and the Politicization of French Artists during the Great Depression,” in PART: Student Journal of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, No. 12

Presentations & Lectures

“Shaping an Art of Democracy,” Annual Conference of the Southeastern College Art Conference, Greensboro, NC, October 2013

“Leisure Left and Right at the 1937 Paris Exposition,” Annual Conference of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945, Chicago, IL, June 2013

“Autonomy or Engagement: French Artists and Writers in the Crucible of Politics,” 1935: The Reality and the Promise Conference, Hofstra University, NY, April 2011

“Underwriting Independence: The Art Market in France in the 1920s,” Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, Manchester, England, April 2009

Co-Chair of the session “Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the arrière-garde: Traditional Art in France, 1900-1960” (with Natalie Adamson, University of St. Andrews, Scotland), College Art Association Conference, Boston, MA, February 2006

“Realism at the Crossroads: Debates over Realism in France in the 1930s,” College Art Association Conference, Atlanta, GA, February 2005

Current Research Projects

Teaching and Research Interests:

I specialize in the art of the first half of the twentieth century, and one question drives my research: why do museums and art history books present modern art as if it were the only art being made in this period? I want to know about the traditional artists of the time, and find out what became of them and their works; and I want to understand the process that put modern art on top.

Beyond this, I love the fact that I can teach a wide range of courses at Assumption covering everything from seventeenth-century Dutch painting to the contemporary art scene. I particularly enjoy teaching the “Art & Politics” classes that are the gateway to the Fortin & Gonthier Foundations of Western Civilization Program because they push me to think about how my own subject fits into the history of human thought.